


Venom and Ice

by sewerpigeon



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Blood Mages, Blood Mages (Dragon Age), Blood Magic, Dark Past, Demons, Emotional Baggage, Grey Warden Alistair (Dragon Age), Grey Wardens, Other, POV Alistair (Dragon Age), POV Original Female Character, POV Warden (Dragon Age), Past Violence, Surana (Dragon Age) has Issues, The Blight (Dragon Age), Warden’s Keep, alistair is just starting to get a crush, but i thought id still tag it just in case, i love that that last one is a tag, the relationship part is p light
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24020977
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sewerpigeon/pseuds/sewerpigeon
Summary: The merchant Levi Dryden has approached Warden mage Ingrelda, asking her to accompany him to Soldier’s Peak in search of proof to restore his family’s long lost honor.  Ingrelda agrees and travels to the old Warden’s Keep with Levi and her companions to discover the place is haunted by its own past, demons crawling the grounds—but Ingrelda’s own ghosts follow her to the keep, and for the first time she is faced with a decision that might let her do something about it.  But is it the right thing?  Or will this choice too merely add to what haunts the young elf?
Relationships: Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Warden & Wynne (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 1





	Venom and Ice

The Blood Mage’s notes were sickening. And yet, Ingrelda could not take her eyes away from the pages. These men and women… many had been nobles; even centuries old she recognized some of the names. It was a perverted irony in her mind that the class of humans who have always dictated and degraded and debilitated her kind had been turned into… subjects.

It was wrong. Ingrelda knew all of it was wrong. But Avernus’s studies had continued to hold her attention. She tried to swallow the guilt as she read on, forcing herself to forget what he meant when referring to his “experiments.”

Perhaps it was her mind as a mage, or as a Grey Warden that was beginning to take over as she digested these gross findings. Who could deny that the ancient mage’s propositions had some validity: what if there was a different way to undergo the Joining? A more efficient way, both to preserve a Warden’s life span and ensure even greater damage upon the darkspawn?

Ingrelda’s hands were shaking as she turned the mottled pages of the journal. Avernus’s notes had become choppy and erratic by the end, as if he could not be bothered to stop and write things down as he had begun finalizing the research of just what darkspawn blood can offer the Wardens until they at last cut themselves off—but it was not due to the mage’s sudden death, for the demon possessing the merchant’s ancestor had sent them here to complete that task for themselves.

Ingrelda had told the demon she would kill him, though at the time they were only the words she knew would allow her and her party to proceed. Dealing with a demon had certainly never been on her bucket list, and she preferred to have all the information before choosing between two evils. Now that she had read these notes, she was being forced to decide her next move.

There is a reason no easy means are available to indefinitely prolong one’s life, and of the means that are, only the souls who have long forsaken conscience for endurance would dare enact them. Morrigan’s mother, Flemeth, had revealed herself to be as much the same brand of corrupted sadist, fueling her life on those of her “daughters.” Or at least that was as much as Morrigan had confessed her mother’s grimoire had contained. The proposition to kill the ancient witch was still floating unanswered between Ingrelda and Morrigan.

In fact, Morrigan stood behind her now, and Ingrelda was tempted to turn and ask for Morrigan’s input on these notes of old. But she could not bring herself to even acknowledge this book out loud, for then she too would have to acknowledge the considerations that had flooded her mind while reading it. Maybe by the time Ingrelda put the book back down, she would feel as though the records were of a time and place far away, told to her by someone else who had seen them before deciding to destroy them at once.

And yet, Ingrelda found her gaze shifting to the vial on the cobwebbed table by the door. There was no label, no sparkling auras of any sort for Ingrelda to make the connection that its contents were indeed the results of the Blood Mage’s experiments. She had closed the journal but had not yet put it down, and it was as if the words inside continued to read themselves aloud in her head: 

_What if the Warden could become more powerful, without having that power kill him? How great would that power be? Would it be enough to stop the demons?_

That was, after all, the very duty of the Grey Wardens...

Ingrelda was jolted from her reverie by the ominous tone of Leliana’s voice behind her, though it was hardly above a whisper in this dank, timeless room: “I am loath to think of what unholy acts have been committed in this tower.” Instinctively, she clutched at the symbol of Andraste hanging around her neck.

Alistair turned to Ingrelda, his own voice somber with the weight of not only the task at hand, but all the history of the Grey Wardens that lie preserved around them, ancient stories of triumph and terror woven into every pock of stone. “Judging by the look on your face,” he said, “it seems that you’ve already found out.”

A flush of shame spread through Ingrelda at his sympathetic gaze, and she scolded herself even while hurrying to set the scientific journal on to the desk to stir a plume of dust from the woodgrain. There was a job to do. Levi needed his answers, and the demons here needed to be dealt with.

Ingrelda had been about to direct her party forward from their half-hearted investigations throughout the rest of the room, but she stopped herself and took a second glance at the despicable vial. It was a weapon, this research, and the very demons the Wardens were meant to combat were the same targets to be destroyed by this research.

A thousand thoughts ran through Ingrelda’s mind, faster than her racing heart, so fast they were barely more than glimpses of images: the alienage, the taste of blood in her mouth, the chill of the alley at night, the glares that always followed her through the city, that lingered with her even long after she closed her eyes at night, the bruises that still throbbed long after they healed…

One scene in particular began resurfacing and she could feel the heat the memory always stirred awakening within her once more. Her first and only opportunity for servitude:

_The nobleman seethes as he scrubs the spit from his face with a perfumed kerchief, but the insult sinks deeper than the skin. His wily grin from moments before was now warped into a gnarled grimace, revealing his true regard for members of Ingrelda’s kind: tools, pets, meant to obey, needing to remember their place._

_“You revolting little bitch,” he says almost soothingly. Beady eyes narrowed, he straightens as if to remind her just who is in control here, but Ingrelda is not impressed. Only the men in need of external reassurance feel compelled to prove any sort of dominance. His puffed chest is full of hot air, and men like him are the last thing she’s ever been afraid of._

_“We are the ones who give your people anything worth living for,” he says, his vile breath still snaking into Ingrelda’s nose and mouth, “and we are the ones who decide if you are worth living for it.”_

_Ingrelda says nothing, both out of spite and not deigning his insecurity worth the dignity of a response. Her own hatred roils inside her, but Ingrelda refuses to give this man what he wants. Even if he were to decide to release her without further scathe, she’d probably stay a little longer just because she knows it would make his day worse._

_The nobleman takes this as further insult, nostrils flaring, and he strikes out in search of a reaction from her, as if he needs her to engage so that he can be given the opportunity to exert his superiority. He needs her to do something worth the vial punishment he wants to give so that he can tell his peers it was justified._

_In the half-blink of time before the blow connects, the tang of ozone fills the room, sudden and sharp enough to jar the nobleman into withdrawing his hand. A force unfamiliar to Ingrelda wells up within her, and it’s only a heartbeat before the chamber erupts in a loud show of hot light, lightning bolts crashing in through the ceiling, singeing everything in the room but Ingrelda herself._

_The nobleman cries out in shock and agony as a current knocks him to the ground and another strikes him right in the loins. Ingrelda is so pleased to see such swift justice that she hardly registers this storm was brought forth by her own will and power._

_The nobleman had lived, and he would have strangled her to death himself had not the tempest drawn the attention of everyone within earshot, Templars fronting the line and pulling Ingrelda from the nobleman’s restraints and replacing them with their own. She remembers little of what happened next; an invisible blow that dashed the rising sense of awakened power within her before blacking out. All she knows is waking up in the Tower to dozens of leers like hers._

The scene playing back still so vividly in her mind, a powerfully sudden calm took Ingrelda in its grasp. There was no shame to be felt in finding power in the pain of those who had caused her very own. So she grabbed the vial...

...and drank.

The empty glass shattered on the floor, drawing the attention of her companions. Naturally, she knew they would simply think she had destroyed its contents in protest, and perhaps in a way she had. Just not before committing an act she already expected to regret as her vision narrowed and flickered with red.

Outwardly, Ingrelda appeared nothing more than stoic though the fluid was beginning to spread throughout her body—it was a cold thick feeling, like venom and ice, the burn of it deep and dull enough to mask without the pain being obvious to her companions. They now followed her dutifully as she pushed herself into the chamber beyond, ignoring what she knew were only imagined screams not her own, wracked with agony in the recesses of her skull, the rhythm of their now-long-faded life forces pounding behind her eyes.

“Are you alright?” Alistair tried to ask, but the question was hardly registered before the mumblings of a forbiddenly-old mage rose from the platform before them.

“I hear you,” Avernus said, bent over his continuing research. “Don’t disrupt my concentration.”

There was sort of an awkward pause before the party drew closer to the steps, and Avernus moved to meet them at bottom.

“Even now the demons seek to replenish their numbers. Are you to thank for this welcome but temporary imbalance?”

“It is the mage himself?” Leliana breathed. “Not a demon in his body? He is still alive?”

“Only just,” the mage scoffed.

“Against all good reason,” said Ingrelda, surprising herself by the gravity of her own voice. “I’ve seen your experiments.” She spit the sentence with vitriol, meaning to express her distaste for such cruelty, but really the hate was coming from her own resentment for letting herself succumb to such a dreadful impulse. It was not just the blood of nobles that was spilled; it was that of her fellow Wardens before. Could she really convince herself her actions were to keep their suffering from being in vain?

A knowing look passed over Avernus’s countenance—though brief, it sent a chill through Ingrelda, for it was plain the years had not addled him as they might any other elder.

“They were necessary,” was all he chose to say, scanning the rest of her group. “Any tool, any iotum of information that could defeat the fell demons was justified.”

“I cannot say I disagree,” Morrigan offered, answering Ingrelda’s private question from earlier. “If a single spell could win the battle, I would not question its source.”

The reassurance this gave Ingrelda was accompanied by guilt at feeling at feeling this much; just what had she done?  
  


* * *

It had been decided in the party’s urgency that regardless of the bad taste Avernus’s past actions had left not only on their tongues but that of the Blood Mage himself, the ancient Warden had been right; first and foremost, this rift in the veil needed mended, the demons needed beaten back—including the one who bore Sophia’s decrepit visage—and so regardless, they were allies.

A bitter, heavy atmosphere hung in the chamber with the portal, and the waves of demons barging through to come at Ingrelda and the others in such close quarters were difficult to maneuver at best. Each wave was increasing in strength, and Ingrelda had a moment of terror realizing she and her companions were gradually being corralled together, demons threatening to flank from all sides. Morrigan’s swarming bites could only be spread so thin between the enemies, Alistair’s blade only able to swing so far, and Leliana’s range had been compromised so that now she was forced to fight within dagger’s length.

They could have been fighting for minutes or days. Ingrelda had lost track of how many demons had come through, and she could see Avernus still focused on his own task apart from the fighters. She and Morrigan’s Mind Blasts could only buy them enough time to adjust the grip on their weapons. There was a welcome if dreadful pause when the shrieks of a Desire Demon came swelling into the room as it emerged from the portal with its wicked, otherworldly grin.

It seemed to know who was the ultimate threat to their portal, and the demon directed its gaze toward Avernus at the far side of the chamber. It was hardly deterred by Leliana’s dagger that had been thrown and sunk into its side or the blast of ice that came from Morrigan’s staff. Alistair charged ahead with his shield, aiming to intercept the powerful foe before it reached the Blood Mage.

With each pulse of Ingrelda’s racing blood, the sounds in the room began to fade until she registered nothing more than a faint ringing in her ears, her vision narrowing its focus on the Desire Demon, and time seemed to slow. Ingrelda mindlessly withdrew the dagger holstered at her side, as if the power of the taint inside her was telling her exactly what to do.

All it took was a single knick of the forearm, and her new source of power surged forth. The blood that was freed from Ingrelda’s wound took on an eerie and dismal aura, and this newly awakened energy allowed her to take control. The globule rose at the bid of her palm, red and black nebulas writhing within. Her eyes never leaving the Desire Demon, Ingrelda unleashed the spell forward, and the sounds of the battle in the room came exploding back to her. 

The ritual was over in a matter of seconds, the demon pealing out a final wail of agony before the violent impact of magic brutally disposed of it. The spectacle, though brief, was powerful, and was enough to distract both the remaining lesser demons as well as Ingrelda’s allies. Her companions, though, were quicker to remember they were still in the midst of battle and turned back just fast enough to gain the upper hand. Now the fight seemed practically easy, and the lines of demons escaping the veil were smote like flies. As the last fell, Avernus sealed the portal, and with a final rush of ethereal wind, the room fell quiet and still.

There was a moment where Avernus had turned to Ingrelda’s companions as if to exchange words, but Ingrelda heard nothing over the sloshing pulse in her ears. Now that their mission was complete, the heightened adrenaline and control of battle having faded, the effects of the concoction were proving themselves to be more than just new magic. Ingrelda could barely register her companions’ looks of concern through her blurring, darkening vision until at last her legs buckled beneath her. She collapsed to the floor, every muscle quivering with fatigue, her skin growing clammy.

Pain began to wrack her body in waves, the radiuses small before spreading all over and throughout, radiating deep aches into the marrow of her very bones. Somewhere, a million miles away, she thought it was Wynne’s voice either shouting or humming, reverberating dully in Ingrelda’s skull. 

She knew she was going to lose consciousness, it’s not something she was unfamiliar with, and the last thought Ingrelda could extrapolate from her own clouded mind was that at least the spasms that caused her to retch happened _before_ Alistair had lifted her from the stone floor.

* * *

Even after leaving her to Wynne’s care, Alistair couldn’t shake the haunting feeling of carrying Ingrelda’s cold weight in his arms. She’d been so limp, her muscles sapped of strength, too weak to even shake. Her skin cold and damp, it had been as if he had pulled her from a riverbed. It had, of course, unsettled him and surely the others as well to have seen the Warden in such a state—how she’d been both before _and_ after passing out.

Listless, Alistair paced around the fire, hardly able to appreciate the newly received shelter from their conquests at Soldier’s Keep. As the sole surviving Wardens of Ostagar, he and Ingrelda had travelled together the longest of the group, had fought side by side in dozens of battles by now. Alistair had just been beginning to wonder if the admiration he felt for the elf was not limited to her respectable skills.

When he realized she had drunk from the vial in the tower, that she had partaken in the fruit of such gruesome studies… She had read the notes. She had to have known just what she was doing, the weight behind such an action. It made Alistair’s stomach roil to even think of what Avernus’s experiments had cost the numerous men and women he had sacrificed. His own conscience would never have allowed him to even entertain the notion of accepting the weight of such grim discoveries.

To have seen what the contents of the vial had allowed Ingrelda to do was at first appalling, draconian even. But Alistair could not ignore the power it gave her against the demons and darkspawn—he couldn’t decide what he was supposed to think. On one hand, he was fascinated as long as he tried to separate himself from the magic’s source.

He and Wynne had been the ones to make the call to let Avernus live, in spite of themselves, even with Ingrelda unconscious in Alistair’s arms. From Alistair’s point of view, he had concluded that perhaps the worst of the worst had already been long done, and in the party’s eventual agreement to allow the Blood Mage to continue his research humanely and discreetly, Alistair had more been hoping it was so he would find a way to help Ingrelda to master this power rather than become another of its victims. 

But Alistair could not deny he was hopeful, too, of what this could mean for their campaign against the Archdemon. After all, it was not as if this was Blood Magic. Well, it was _blood_ magic, but it wasn’t _Blood Magic._

A lot had happened in the past couple of days that had left Alistair in a bit of a whirlwind: dealing with the history of the Wardens, demons, experiments on people, seeing the woman who had sort of unofficially taken charge of their group lapse in what might have been considered a moment of weakness or poor judgement. Alistair himself would not deny his initial reaction was disagreement, but he had begun to learn throughout their travels he trusted her to make choices for the right reasons.

He had not seen her drink the vial, but he had definitely noticed some dismal shift in the way she carried herself as they proceeded into Avernus’s chambers. He could not deduce much, frankly more a fighter than an insightful judge of personal and philosophical conflict—especially when that conflict was within others. Leliana and Wynne especially had found themselves dueling with their feelings as well upon learning what Ingrelda had done, and Alistair’s trust in both their judgement as well had left him at first unsure of whether to feel respect or fear for his fellow Warden’s choice. But Alistair was sure that Ingrelda’s reasoning had not been black and white. Her lovely features had been shadowed with something more than the darkness of the castle during their battle by the portal, and even her fevered mutterings bore the weight of sorrow or remorse, even if the words themselves were largely incoherent.

By the fire now, pretending he wasn’t longing to run back upstairs to Ingrelda’s hurriedly-designated chamber, Alistair realized in spite of it all, Ingrelda’s actions had not made a difference in the way he was beginning to feel about her. It merely added a layer of interest, to say the least, and in the midst of it all, when the battle had barely been won as she fell heaving to the floor, Alistair’s only fears were _for_ her, not _of_ her.

If something like this was supposed to have made him feel less respect and trust for her as their leader, as his companion, he couldn’t do it. Maybe it was the bias from the way his heart had begun to beat faster when she would brush past him and he caught the sweet, earthy scent of her hair, but Alistair could only feel more curiosity about her than anything.

He was reminded he knew next to nothing about Ingrelda’s life before Ostagar, although the implications of being both an elf and a mage were enough to allow him to comfortably guess it was not all sunshine and roses. To think on it made him feel simple and his own troubles small. He wondered if once she had recovered if she would speak to him about this, Warden-to-Warden.

* * *

In spite of Wynne’s insistence that she remain lying down, Ingrelda had herself insisted to sit up so she could more easily meet her elder’s gaze and speak with her not as a younger mage pleading to senior mage, or as a designated Warden in charge of her group, or even as the younger pleading the older to see her reasoning—this was nothing to do with authority. Ingrelda wanted to speak with Wynne as equals. Still, the senior mage’s stare was both soft and stern like a mother feeling disappointed, concerned, and relieved all at once, and it made Ingrelda feel a decade younger.

“I hadn’t wanted to think it through.” Ingrelda more felt that she was confessing rather than explaining. Her throat burned as she spoke hoarsely, raw from the acid she had been choking on in her fit from earlier. Despite wanting to speak as equals, Ingrelda felt her gaze wandering from Wynne’s, though more out of exhaustion and rumination than actual avoidance. “There was too _much_ to think through, and—I don’t know, I… I think I just wanted to feel like I had some control. Over something. And the longer I stopped to think, the less control I had.” The longer she spoke, the younger and smaller Ingrelda felt she became. Unconsciously her knees began to draw up to her chest as she sat on the bed.

Wynne was not without understanding or empathy; she had to admit to herself any anger came more from worry, but regardless she felt it an ill foreboding to see such a rash impulse from a Grey Warden meant to gather armies against the Blight. But the girl’s weakened muscles still trembled as she sat, and Wynne was finding it harder to fight her own exhaustion. She sat next to the younger on the bed; always Wynne’s mind would drift to Aneirin, and now, here, with another young elven mage, Wynne found herself softening with her own regrets, not wanting to repeat them with Ingrelda or let Ingrelda bear any more of her own regrets than she might have to.

“I would never presume to guess just what all you have gone through,” Wynne began after a beat, her voice softer and wearier than she’d expected to come from her own mouth. “But I will not pretend I have not seen at least some of it for myself, both within the Tower and without, and it is foolish for both of us to think that the damage of such a life would be swept away with any single action. Perhaps only so much peace can be made, but you are far too young and strong to let yourself be beaten down by your own anger.

“You have said it yourself, and it is true, that any division to be had now should be only between the people of Ferelden and the darkspawn. I think the repercussions of your action can be seen as both punishment and repentance enough. You will bear the weight of what this new power has cost, and at the same time you will use that to make yourself ever stronger against the threats you are to face—that we are all to face. Do not let yourself be buried in regret, but remember that if that is something you feel, it means you have not been turned into the monster you are afraid you might be. You are allowed to feel something softer than hate, to be driven by more than anger, and to fear more than an enemy.”

Maybe Wynne’s words had been spoken in just the right way at just the right time. Or perhaps it could have been the sickness brought in by the concoction, or maybe residual effects of the concoction itself. Maybe it was the sheer raw exhaustion not only from what all had happened at the Peak, not only becoming a Warden, but all of it, from the beginning. No matter which had broken the levee, the weight of all from Ingrelda’s past, present, and future began to press down upon her from all sides, inside and out. All she was sorry for, all she was afraid of, all that she wanted. She couldn’t pretend she never felt it anymore, and her resolve at last cracked.

Ingrelda made no sound at first as she wrapped her arms around herself, but the sobs began to eke amongst the trembling of her still fatigued muscles. Still aware of Wynne’s presence at her side, words were beyond Ingrelda now as she curled into herself, as if that would offer some protection from the hurt or being seen like this.

Wynne didn’t care. Her arms instinctively encircled the elf, the embrace stronger than what her age might predict. The elder mage had expressed disdain for the choice Ingrelda made in Avernus’s tower, but she could not pretend she had not lived long enough and seen enough to not understand just why she had done it, that her intentions had been both spiteful and hopeful in consuming the Blood Mage’s fruit of grisly labor. But now all she could see was a scared girl who had never before been able to let herself be scared, to be nothing but defiant in the face of anything that could have been seen as weakness because otherwise she would never have survived.

Ingrelda made no protest, leaning into the embrace. Wynne stroked her hair, willing to keep hold of her for as long as it took for this moment to run its course. She had felt her own regret in the midst of comforting the younger mage, of her own past mistakes and harsh expectations of apprentices and Wardens alike. There hadn’t yet been much shared between the two, but an unspoken bond had undoubtedly sprouted in the time they had known each other: Ingrelda the orphaned elf, trying in vain to do everything on her own and Wynne’s given compulsion to care for and give what guidance she could to those mages younger than her, as if to deter them from making such regrettable mistakes and to make sure they can see and reach their own potential. 

Perhaps they were still strangers, but it was clear in this moment, they each needed the other to fill an empty place they have each been carrying for such a long time. But Wynne knew too that Ingrelda needed rest, and when the worst of her crying had past, very gently and transparently did Wynne brush her fingertips across Ingrelda’s forehead, casting a spell to finally let her fall softly asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually did not even realize not only how much dragon age DLC there was, but that most of it took place before the end of the main game, so when i actually played through warden’s keep it was a little disappointing bc none of the bonuses were of use to me anymore lol BUT
> 
> when playing through the warden’s peek quest anyway, i thought it would be a super interesting narrative choice/character development opportunity for my warden to have drunk from Avernus’s vial in a moment of spite—even though i played the quest post-game, this is something that would happen earlier in the plot before she had undergone the sort of moral development and clarity that would have prevented her from doing as much later on in the campaign.
> 
> anyway i know this is super unpolished, im more worried about just getting words down these days than making them pretty tbh, but i hope they provide some nodule of entertainment nonetheless. thanks for reading!
> 
> you can find me on social media @sewerpigeonart :^)


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